1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an algometry management method and system adapted for reducing the time required by a physician to evaluate pain.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Pain is a subjective, complex phenomenon consisting of (a) a sensorial perception sometimes revealing a potential or real tissular lesion, and (b) the affective response provoked by this sensorial perception. As pain sensation is also psychic, objective evaluation thereof is difficult.
Presently, two main types of pain evaluation are currently used during clinical examination of patients: evaluation of the sensitivity of the affected tissues to pain, and evaluation of the "clinical pain".
Evaluation of pain sensitivity is generally performed by means of palpation of skin or underlying tissues (for example muscles), or by means of other more or less reliable methods. Both the response to manual palpation and evaluation of pain sensitivity from this response are complex and often unreliable.
"Clinical pain" is usually evaluated from a verbal report of the patient; these verbal reports are generally unreliable since they depend on the patient's "pain memory" and since chronic pain may widely vary within a same day and from one day to the other. Those of ordinary skill in the art know that retrospective symptom data are notoriously inaccurate.